The Shadow Robot Company, experts at grasping and manipulation for robotic hands, have teamed up with OpenAI, a San Francisco-based AI research company, for the second time to prove that agents trained in simulation can effectively perform human-like tasks without real-world replication of training.

Shadow’s Dexterous Hand manipulates physical objects with unprecedented human-like dexterity under the command of OpenAI’s robotic system called Dactyl. Dactyl is trained entirely in simulation using the MuJoCo physics engine. This simulation is only a rough approximation of the real robotic set-up but through domain randomization (altering aspects of the environment like its physics and visual appearance), Dactyl can digitally learn how to solve real-world tasks without needing accurate modelling of the real-world or demonstrations by humans.

While Dactyl doesn’t need humans to input knowledge to teach it, the way in which it learns is certainly human-like. As humans learn from failure and through trial and error, Dactyl uses reinforcement learning to become smarter. After learning the techniques – in this case, reorienting several kinds of objects – Dactyl can then transfer its knowledge to govern the Shadow Hand to perform goal-orientated tasks effectively, without the fuss of fine-tuning.

The Shadow Hand is designed to mimic the human hand, from its overall size being that of a human male to a total of 24 joints, to having the range of movement of the human hand. Using OpenAI’s Dactyl software it is seen to grasp and manipulate objects with state-of-the-art precision using grasps observed in humans, such as tripod (a grip that uses the thumb, index finger, and middle finger), prismatic (a grip in which the thumb and finger oppose each other), and tip pinch grip. It also picked up Dactyl’s learnings to twist and toss the object into the desired position.

After you place an object – such as a cube or a block – in the palm of the Shadow Dexterous Hand, you ask Dactyl to move it around; for example, to rotate the cube to put a new face on top. Dactyl’s network is told the coordinates of the fingertips and uses images from three regular cameras positioned around Shadow’s Hand. OpenAI tested how whether Dactyl could achieve 50 rotations before it dropped the object or failed to find a movement. The idea is to provide the system with a variety of experiences rather than maximizing realism.

Why is this exciting? Although the first humanoid hands were developed decades ago, using them to manipulate objects effectively has been a long-standing challenge in robotic control. Unlike other problems such as locomotion, progress on dexterous manipulation using traditional robotics approaches has been slow, and current techniques remain limited in their ability to manipulate objects in real-life settings. Now, using Shadow’s Dexterous Hand, which is the closest resemblance to the human hand available on the market and a great tool for AI testing, OpenAI were able to show successful application of reinforcement learning into the real world.

Rich Walker, Managing Director of the Shadow Robot Company says: “It’s been a great pleasure to work with OpenAI again. We have shown robots can achieve amazing levels of dexterity in such an elegant way and we’re keen to further demonstrate the capabilities of deep learning algorithms in solving real-world robotic challenges.”

Touching on the topic of the Shadow Hand, the team at OpenAI state: “Modern-day robots are typically designed for specific tasks in constrained settings and are largely unable to utilize complex end-effectors. In contrast, people are able to perform a wide range of dexterous manipulation tasks in a diverse set of environments, making the human hand a grounded source of inspiration for research into robotic manipulation.”

All images, video and GIFs are credited to our friends over at OpenAI.

]]>We’re looking for a Software Engineer!https://www.shadowrobot.com/hiring-software-engineer/
Tue, 31 Jul 2018 18:06:31 +0000https://www.shadowrobot.com/?p=6494Have you heard? We’re hiring! Could you be our new Software Engineer? Do you want to join a team of brilliant programmers, engineers and robotic minds?

]]>Our sincere thanks to our partners as our CHIRON project comes to an endhttps://www.shadowrobot.com/our-sincere-thanks-to-our-partners-as-our-chiron-project-comes-to-an-end/
Thu, 08 Mar 2018 16:33:56 +0000https://www.shadowrobot.com/?p=6373For those catching up, we’re involved in a project called CHIRON which stands for Care at Home using Intelligent Robotic Omni-functional Nodes. Don’t let the name scare you away because what we set out to do is to design care robotics to help solve an issue that will impact at least one person you know.

Caring for our ageing population is already becoming a greater load on our NHS and Social Care resources as the UK struggles to pay for all the adequate care needed. Not limited to the UK, this is an issue worldwide as the number of people over 65 is expected to rise to more than 1.6 billion by 2050. Even if they could be paid for, there won’t be enough carers to go around. There are simply not enough money or people to staff them properly and the result is paralysing the NHS, blocking beds and causing premature and unfortunate deaths.

CHIRON is a two-year project (which ran from March 2016 to February 2018) funded by Innovate UK to design care robotics for the future with a focus on dignity, independence, and choice. Having spent £2 Million researching and developing a solution to averting a demographic disaster, we’ve come up with a prototype modular robotic system with the brand name of JUVA. JUVA can help take on heavy lifting tasks, help you get ready for the day and do essential jobs around the home including fetching objects and preparing daily meals. It can also be deployed in Nursing Homes and in hospitals where staff could nurse instead of doing the lifting and increase productivity.

Here at the Shadow Robot Company, we are extremely proud of this project and while we could shout about it so much more in this post, there’s a fully-fledged website dedicated to CHIRON here.

What is necessary to mention is our sincere thanks to our many partners, listed below, who made this possible. Much more than just a collaboration, the support we’ve provided one another has resulted in something that can positively impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people from those needing care, to those working in care homes, to care charities, to social care organisations and housing.

We’re also positively impacting those involved in robotic technology and AI and those informing Government policies. Together we succeeded to create something that has potential to enter a more dynamic and flexible market, offering people greater choice in the care sector when they require it.

As we come to an end on working with our partners on the CHIRON project, the results from the research and development we’ve collaboratively done remain extremely relevant and vital for the years ahead. You can join us as we share our findings on April 12th at our CHIRON Project Conference. There’s still time to register.

To show your support and to keep up with future updates on our CHIRON project, follow the project on twitter: @chironproject

Partners:

The project was managed by a consortium led by Designability. We, Shadow Robot Company were a key technology partner along with Bristol Robotics Laboratory, as we both have considerable expertise in conducting pioneering research and development in robotics. Award-winning social enterprise care provider, Three Sisters Care brought user-centered design to the very core of the CHIRON project. Smart Homes & Buildings Association worked to introduce the range of devices that will create CHIRON and make it an indispensable presence in our homes. The funding for this project has been awarded by Innovate UK’s Long Term Care Revolution SBRI national challenge which aims to revolutionise long-term care in the UK through business-led innovation.

]]>Shadow Robot Hands help new research into safe artificial intelligence by OpenAIhttps://www.shadowrobot.com/shadow-robot-hands-help-new-ai-research/
Wed, 28 Feb 2018 17:00:19 +0000https://www.shadowrobot.com/?p=6342The Shadow Robot Company, renowned for being leaders in robotic hands for grasping and manipulation and using their robotic hands to address real world challenges from fruit picking to bomb disposal, have announced that they are working with OpenAI, a non-profit company focusing on the path to safe artificial intelligence, by supplying OpenAI their Shadow Dexterous Hands for AI research.

The research led by OpenAI has created eight newly released environments, four of which uses the Shadow Hand robot to solve realistic manipulation tasks. The Shadow Hand is tactile enough to rotate a block and a solid egg and flexible enough to move a pen between its fingers.

All the new tasks have the concept of a “goal” such as achieving the desired orientation of a block in the Shadow hand block manipulation task. Along with releasing these new robotics environments, OpenAI are releasing code for Hindsight Experience Replay (HER), a reinforcement learning algorithm that can teach and improve robotic technology to learn from failure. Results from the research – using the hardware supplied by Shadow Robot Company – is publicly available.

Rich Walker, Managing Director of the Shadow Robot Company says: “We are happy and honoured that OpenAI chose our Shadow Dexterous Hand to use for their latest research into safe and fundamental advances in AI capabilities. We’re keen to see what other opportunities are out there for us in the AI space and the Shadow Dexterous Hand is the perfect tool for exploring AI as it mimics the human hand, from overall size, to a total of 24 joints, to its range of movement.”

]]>We’ll be at European Robotics Forum 2018https://www.shadowrobot.com/european-robotics-forum-2018/
Mon, 12 Feb 2018 17:48:50 +0000https://www.shadowrobot.com/?p=6217You may remember our last blog post on ERF 2017 where we pinned down our MD, Rich Walker (not literally though with his busy schedule, it may get to that) and asked him about his involvement at the event. Well, a whole year later, we’re now looking forward to ERF 2018 on Tuesday 13th to Thursday 15th March, in Tampere, Finland.

Rich is one of the board members and will be chairing the programme second year in a row. He’ll be overseeing the workshops, all aimed at strengthening the robotics community in Europe and help open discussions within delegates and attendees on what excites them most within the industry.

Over 800 European robotics top experts from academia to industries are expected to attend this year forming a huge hub of people who are passionate about robotics. Equally as exciting is this year’s theme, “Robots and Us,” which covers current societal and technical themes related to the field of robotics including human-robot-collaboration and how robotics can improve industrial productivity and service sector operations.

We’ll also be exhibiting at the event with an exciting demo of one of revolutionary robotics. We’ve got quite a few to choose from as you’ll see on our products page so come along and see one of them live in action.

If you’re on twitter, connect with us @shadowrobot and let’s get some conversations started using the hashtags #eu_Robotics #erf2018

]]>Have yourself a Merry Little Grav-Mass…https://www.shadowrobot.com/have-yourself-a-merry-little-grav-mass/
Sat, 16 Dec 2017 12:07:47 +0000https://www.shadowrobot.com/?p=6187
]]>First look at RAMCIP clinical trialshttps://www.shadowrobot.com/first-look-at-ramcip-clinical-trials/
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 12:07:25 +0000https://www.shadowrobot.com/?p=6185For the past two years, we have been working as a partner in the RAMCIP project (Robotic Assistant for MCI Patients at home), funded by Horizon 2020 funded project. RAMCIP aims to research and develop real robotic solutions for assistive robotics for the elderly and those suffering from Mild Cognitive Impairments and dementia. This is a key step to developing a wide range of assistive technologies. We will adopt existing technologies from the robotics community, fuse those with user-centred design activities and practical validation, with aim to create a step-change in robotics for assisted living.

We’re really excited to announce that we have begun clinical trials with the RAMCIP robot in Barcelona, and you can see video of that below.

We built the hand of the RAMCIP robot. It’s very early stages but we’re really excited to see these trials begin!

]]>Case Study: NeuroInformatics Group @ Bielefeld Universityhttps://www.shadowrobot.com/case-study-neuroinformatics-group-bielefeld-university/
Fri, 08 Dec 2017 16:39:46 +0000https://www.shadowrobot.com/?p=6159Cast your minds back, way back, to 2004. Martha Stewart was sent to prison, Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction, and Ocean’s Twelve was in the cinema. Make of that what you will. However, the most thing that happened to us that year is that we had our first customer for the initial version of the Shadow Dexterous Hand.

Our first customer was The NeuroInformatics Group at Bielefeld University, led by Prof. Dr. Helge Ritter. The aim of their work is to strive for a deeper understanding of the required interplay of adaptive control, embodiment, knowledge, and learning to enable cognitive interaction for robots or intelligent interfaces.

In contrast to today’s engineered systems (that rely on an almost complete specification of their numerous details), neural systems are shaped by self-organisation, adaptation and learning and therefore can flexibly adapt to new situations.To gain insights into the working principles of these systems and to replicate similar functions in technology, the NeuroInformatics Group brings together methods from neural networks, machine learning, computer vision, dynamical systems and control, embracing topics such as data mining, brain-machine interfaces, evolutionary computation and complex systems integration, and drawing cross-disciplinary inspiration from brain science, psychology and linguistics.

They told us “We are striving to understand human manual intelligence and replicate it in artificial robot systems. To this end, the Shadow Robot Hands serve as a unique test bed for our control approaches to achieve human-like grasping and manipulation performance. Having equipped the hands with custom-made tactile sensors, providing more than 90 taxels spread all over, we are particularly looking into tactile and vision-driven control loops for bimanual manipulation.”

“With its unique, human-like design the Shadow Hands serve as the perfect test bed to design, evaluate, and improve computational models of human manual intelligence. Here we particularly need hands of human size and dexterity.”Due to the intimate connection between neural networks and the control of behaviour, robotics is considered the major test bed for algorithms and computational models. In the work of the NeuroInformatics Group, the focus is particularly on manual intelligence and its replication for articulated robot hands. Utilizing eye-, motion-, and force-tracking systems, they study human manipulation actions and subsequently turn their insights into appropriate robot control strategies, utilizing tight tactile- and vision-driven feedback loops to achieve robust behaviour. In cooperation with other research groups, they’re working towards robot systems that can be taught in an interactive manner.

The group have been loyal repeat customers of ours, buying updated hands once they’ve been released. They even made us this amazing birthday card for us! Make sure you click this link to read more about the work that the NeuroInformatics Group do. It’s fascinating and we’re proud to call them our clients!

]]>Shadow’s SGS shortlisted for design award at Innovate 2017https://www.shadowrobot.com/shadows-sgs-shortlisted-for-design-award-at-innovate-2017/
Mon, 20 Nov 2017 12:48:33 +0000https://www.shadowrobot.com/?p=6103
After being thrilled to win a place at Innovate 2017, we’re even happier at being shortlisted at the event for the Design in Innovation Award.

The award recognises innovation projects that demonstrate excellent use of human-centred research and design processes (rather than solely technology-led innovation), leading to new products or services that are more desirable, useful and easy-to-use.

Innovate 2017 showcased the best of UK innovation – we were just one of 100 companies nationwide to be selected to exhibit to over 2,500 businesses at the NEC, Birmingham.

We exhibited a version of our Smart Grasping System™ – an intelligent, industrial grasper. Currently in development, with further developments expected over the coming year, the Smart Grasping System will feature built-in intelligence and vision, meaning that you can use one robot to perform the work of many robots, thus reducing the amount of robots needed in a factory. For more information about the Smart Grasper, feel free to get in touch with us.

]]>Ugo Cupcic moves on to become Director of Research at Spoonhttps://www.shadowrobot.com/ugo-cupcic-moves-on-to-become-director-of-research-at-spoon/
Thu, 16 Nov 2017 10:36:18 +0000https://www.shadowrobot.com/?p=6091

His old boss (from a previous job at Aldebaran Robotics) has started a very cool company called Spoon, who are working on state-of-the-art emotionally intelligent AI creatures. He asked Ugo to join them as their new Director of Research – and Ugo felt that it is too good an opportunity to pass up!

Ugo – everyone at Shadow wishes you the best of luck on your next adventure! You will be greatly missed. Right, now we have to plan the leaving drinks…